Perceval

Perceval

Perceval is the Grail knight or one of the Grail knights in numerous medieval and modern stories of the Grail quest. Perceval first appears in Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval or Conte del Graal (c.1190). The incomplete story prompted a series of "continuations," in the third of which (c. 1230), by an author named Manessier, Perceval achieves the Grail. (An analogue to Chrétien's tale is found in the thirteenth-century Welsh romance Peredur.) Chrétien's story was also the inspiration for one of the greatest romances of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (c. 1200-1210). As in Chrétien's story, Wolfram's Parzival is initially naive and foolish, having been sheltered from the dangers of the chivalric world by his mother. In both versions Perceval/Parzival is the guest of the wounded Fisher King (called Anfortas by Wolfram but unnamed by Chrétien) at whose castle he witnesses the Grail procession and fails to ask--because he has been advised of the impoliteness of asking too many questions--the significance of what he sees and, in Wolfram's romance, what causes Anfortas's pain. This failure is calamitous because asking the question would have cured the king. Other medieval versions of the story of Perceval can be found in the French texts known as the Didot-Perceval and Perlesvaus (also called The High Book of the Grail or Le Haut Livre du Graal).
Perceval is the central character in the fourteenth-century Middle English romance Sir Perceval of Galles which is apparently based on Chrétien's tale but which omits the Grail motif entirely. Perceval is one of three...

Perceval is the Grail knight or one of the Grail knights in numerous medieval and modern stories of the Grail quest. Perceval first appears in Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval or Conte del Graal (c.1190). The incomplete story prompted a series of "continuations," in the third of which (c. 1230), by an author named Manessier, Perceval achieves the Grail. (An analogue to Chrétien's tale is found in the thirteenth-century Welsh romance Peredur.) Chrétien's story was also the inspiration for one of the greatest romances of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (c. 1200-1210). As in Chrétien's story, Wolfram's Parzival is initially naive and foolish, having been sheltered from the dangers of the chivalric world by his mother. In both versions Perceval/Parzival is the guest of the wounded Fisher King (called Anfortas by Wolfram but unnamed by Chrétien) at whose castle he witnesses the Grail procession and fails to ask--because he has been advised of the impoliteness of asking too many questions--the significance of what he sees and, in Wolfram's romance, what causes Anfortas's pain. This failure is calamitous because asking the question would have cured the king. Other medieval versions of the story of Perceval can be found in the French texts known as the Didot-Perceval and Perlesvaus (also called The High Book of the Grail or Le Haut Livre du Graal).
Perceval is the central character in the fourteenth-century Middle English romance Sir Perceval of Galles which is apparently based on Chrétien's tale but which omits the Grail motif entirely. Perceval is one of three Grail knights in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the others being Galahad and Bors. Perceval functions as the narrator of the dramatic monologue which comprises most of Tennyson's idyll "The Holy Grail." In this idyll, much of what Perceval tells focuses on Galahad as the central Grail knight. Richard Wagner, drawing his inspiration primarily from Wolfram von Eschenbach though greatly simplifying Wolfram's plot, wrote the opera Parsifal in 1882. As in the medieval stories, Parsifal is presented initially as a fool, but is pure enough to heal the wounded Anfortas and to become himself the keeper of the Grail.
Among the twentieth century works to deal with Perceval/Parsifal are the poem "Parsifal" by Arthur Symons, several of Charles Williams's Arthurian poems, Robert Trevelyan's The Birth of Parsival (1905) and The New Parsifal: An Operatic Fable (1914), and the novels Percival and the Presence of God (1978) by Jim Hunter, Parsifal (1988) by Peter Vansittart, and Richard Monaco's tetralogy (containing Parsival [1977], The Grail War [1979], The Final Quest [1980], and Blood and Dreams [1985]). One of the most interesting Arthurian films is Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978), a fairly faithful rendition of Chrétien's Conte del Graal. The story of Perceval is recast in a modern setting in the film The Fisher King (1990).

Bibliography

Bogdanow, Fanni. "The Transformation of the Role of Perceval in Some Thirteenth Century Prose Romances." In Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973. Pp. 47-65.

Weston, Jessie. The Legend of Sir Perceval: Studies upon Its Origin, Development, and Position in the Arthurian Cycle. 2 vols. (Vol. 1: Chrétien de Troyes and Wauchier de Denain; Vol. 2: The Prose Perceval according to the Modena MS.) London: David Nutt, 1906, 1909.